Hannibal season 2 episode 9 recap: 'Shiizakana'

Half of the fun of Hannibal's second season comes from trying to dissect, from moment to moment, who holds power. The cat and mouse game no longer has clear rules or established players: Hannibal is still playing everyone, and now he's being seduced himself by Will, but is Will the bait or the baited? Is it Hannibal or Jack who has misplaced faith in him?

In 'Shiizakana', Will is presented with a dark vision of his possible future self – Randall Tier, a vulnerable former patient who Hannibal successfully molded into a monster. He kills Randall, which you can take either as him vanquishing the possibility that he will ever go down the same path, or embracing the darkness more completely than ever.

So just how in control is Will? On the one hand, his opening conversation with Jack last week very clearly laid out the idea that everything he's doing with Hannibal is a lure, and that he's feigning this gradual turn to the dark side in order to seduce Hannibal into revealing himself. Every dark thing he's done has enough mitigating factors to prevent it from being a real point of no return – although his killing Randall was presented as a dramatic last-minute turn this week, that was pretty clearly an act of self defense.

I have to say, I don't really understand the concept of Hannibal sending Randall after Will as a test. The idea seems to be that forcing Will into a corner where he has to kill a man will bring out his natural murderous instincts, but sending an animalistic serial killer to Will's house just doesn't seem like the best way to prove anything. Plenty of reasonable people would kill rather than be killed in that situation, without it being a sign of any deep psychosis.

On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence that Will is genuinely losing it. He's having extremely violent dreams, dreams in which he alternately destroys the wendigo and becomes it, and when Hannibal asks him to envision a satisfying outcome from the barn last week, what he envisions is still murder.

And then there's the growing, pointed physical closeness between Hannibal and Will, following last week's charged face-caressing. "You can train a bear to be a wolf, or a wolf to be a bear," Peter tells Will. "Train them long enough, they'll hunt together, feed together." Hannibal and Will are different species, but the gap between them is closing, figuratively and literally. In Hannibal's office there's no space between them any more; they sit together on his desk, body language mirrored. If this is all Will's ruse, he's playing a dangerous game.

Mads Mikkelsen did spectacular work in one particular scene, which also contained the episode's most horribly beautiful bits of dialog. Randall describes the "ragged bits of scalp, trailing their tails of hair like comets" that stick in his teeth, and Hannibal looks at him like a work of art as he murmurs: "Beautiful." He takes pure pleasure in the artistry of his creations, but he was also more than willing to sacrifice Randall to Will, his "beloved". (Interesting that this is the word Will's dream version of Hannibal used.)

Will might be special, but he isn't the first. Turning patients into monsters has seemingly been something of a habit for Hannibal; he dodges the question when Will asks how many there have been. He's trying it with Margot too, but she's sharp as a tack and has already realized something is very off with her new shrink, since he basically encouraged her to murder her brother. That was not even remotely subtle – Hannibal might be getting a little too cocky for his own good.

Will and Margot's connection offers up a lot of really, really intriguing possibilities going forward; she might end up being instrumental to his redemption. Despite the reveal of Randall's body (which to me still felt less shocking than his would-be murder of an unnarmed man last week), Will's not fully in the shadows yet. The turning point would be harming someone innocent, and he's a long way from going there. So far.

Food for thought:- I get that winter in Maryland is really, really cold and headgear is essential, but Hannibal's hat is still effing ridiculous. Come on now. This is a guy who gets his plastic hazmat suit tailored. - "What's your private carnage?" Chat up lines, Will Graham style.- Speaking of that, I'm still not totally ruling out a Will/Margot hookup. They had a great vibe this week, and her "wrong parts" comment doesn't rule out her being bi. Maybe I'm just hoping because I really don't think I want to ever see Will and Alana become a thing again after the events of this season.- It was a very, very smart decision not to show Randall in his killer gear too clearly. A man creating a beast suit modeled on fossils is really cool and creepy in theory, but it could very, very easily have looked hokey if they hadn't kept it to such limited glimpses. - Jack was happily nomming away at that omelette, despite now knowing that there's a pretty decent chance that the meat is people. And sweetbreads are just disgusting even if they're not people. - Peter and his rat. So, so, so unbearably adorable. I seriously just want someone to hug him. And I don't know how I missed that the mutual love for animals was another of the many Will/Peter parallels last season. I hope Jeremy Davies recurs on the show. - Will's revelation about Bedelia certainly seemed to piss Hannibal off, didn't it? "Fascinating." - Thank God Buster was okay. I'm cool with any amount of human butchery on this show, but the dogs are off limits.